Frequently Asked Questions

This section contains our answers to questions we frequently are asked. If you have additional questions or comments that might enhance the answers below, please forward them to us.

Questions are grouped up front with a link to the answer below. I add the answers at front of the answer section as I create them. If you want to find the latest additions, start at Answers and read down.

Questions About Acrylics

Questions About Art and Marketing

Questions About Artists and Self As an Artist

Questions About Colour

Questions About Process and Personal Development

Answers

Is what I'm doing legitimate - real art? This questions captures the type of self-doubt so many of us experience from time to time. In answer I will quote American artist Robert Irwin:

"The most critical part ... is for them to begin developing the ability to assign their own tasks and make their own criticism in direct relation to their own needs and not in light of some abstract criteria. Because once you learn how to make your own assignments instead of relying on someone else, then you have learned the only thing you need to get out of school, that is you've learned how to learn." (italics mine)

It is a fair question to ask, but a dangerous one. It moves one's focus away from the issue of discovering what one wants to say and express personally, to externally constrained determinants which will always cause confusion, dissatisfaction and lead to failure.

At some point you have need to come to the realization "by God, my way is the right way."

How can I learn to loosen up? A major inhibiting factor for beginning artists is the fear of spoiling a work, especially if things have been going well. Underlying this is the assumption or expectation that every piece should be successful. Katherine Chang Liu, a highly successful and respected American artist and curator, has estimated that only one piece in 15 she finishes is really good.

If you are in early to mid career, not only will the majority of pierces you paint have problems, some of them major, but in a short period of time you should improve and be able to recognize this fact. One solution is to consider most of what you do as studies instead of "paintings". With a study, we do not expect a masterpiece and feel free to make mistakes. We are more open to experimentation and the exploration of new ideas and techniques. This is what needs to go before the accomplishment of good finished work.

Is what I think is good art, really good art? Goodness in all things is relative to whatever underlying ethic or aesthetic is used to define and measure it. The real issue is how does my criteria of goodness in art compare with that of someone else? Even within the larger art community, there can be disagreement on this subject. This is a topic arbitrated by professional critics, gallery and museum curatorial staff and academics in fine arts universities and colleges.

The formal study of this topic is aesthetics. Your personal tastes are a reflection of your personal aesthetic, an understanding of which is probably more important than a general cultural aesthetic. Expect your personal aesthetic yo change over time.

I'm stuck. Where do I  go from here? In the movie Pollock, Jackson Pollock played by Ed Harris, is stuck - for years. Yet he continues to go into the studio and play with paint. Suddenly, one day, it comes together for him. His own work and the entire art world moves forward as a result. The point is it is much easier to change the direction of  a moving object than a stationary one.

  1. Use the work of others for inspiration. Take ideas that come into your mind and try them out.

  2. Do the opposite. Use different colours, different compositions, different shapes or line. Use different tools. The more radical the change, the more likely it will help move you out of a rut. It doesn't mean the change itself will be a characteristic of your new direction, but it may be enough to give you new inspiration.

  3. Above all, keep painting.

I would like to learn how to do ... better. This is really asking how to acquire technique. We can reduce the answer to a number of steps:

  1. Determine very explicitly, what you want to learn or need to know. It will probably address a perceived weakness or deficiency in your work.

  2. Consider what source may meet the need:

    1. Can I learn what I need from one or two books? Be aware of the trap of becoming a reader about painting rather than becoming a painter who occasionally reads. 

    2. Do I feel I need a course? If so, on what topic? What level of experience? Talk to other artists to get recommendations. What is the instructor like? What is the work of the students like? That is, are they carbon copies of the instructor?

    3. Should I take a workshop, especially one with some national or international recognition? Similar to the point above, try and assess whether you are likely to get a good return on your investment.

    4. Can a local arts organization fulfill the need?

    5. Can I get what i need by association with my peers or a mentor?

  3. Develop a plan to acquire the skill. This may simply be making a reservation or ordering a book. It may be an annual working vacation.

  4. Revisit your technical and art associated learning needs on a regular basis. Incorporate this experience into your personal development plans on a regular basis.

As a beginner, where can I sell my work? First, be prepared for rejection. The story I like is one told by Jules Olitski whom Clement Greenberg at one point called America's greatest living artist. For years he tried to get any gallery in New York to carry his work without luck. Having plucked up your courage, try:

  1. An exhibit in your own home with friends invited. Your personal network will be the greatest source of sales in the beginning.

  2. See if you can arrange a short exhibition in your church.

  3. Join a studio tour.

  4. Find a small group of artists that you feel compatible with and arrange a group show. It provides emotional support, distributes the workload and increases the audience. Recognize that the friends an artist invites will buy that artist's work most likely. But it gives you exposure and that's what it is all about.

  5. Ask your doctor, dentist or any other professional you are associated with if they would display your work. The risk is people go to get their teeth fixed, not to buy art. Your dentist's job is to fix teeth, not to sell art. Still, it's exposure and experience.

  6. Restaurants are a good venue. The establishment doesn't have to pay for wall decoration and it gets changed frequently. The downside is the same as in point 5. One way to overcome this is to offer a commission to serving staff if they create a sale.

How would someone keep up-to-date on market trends? Some steps might be:

  1. Determine your market. Is it entry level art sold in shopping malls, is it high end art sold in the most prestigious commercial galleries in New York and London, or is it public collections?

  2. Find out the literature sources that address the venues or level that characterize your interests. There are trade magazines such as Art Business News that will give you a good idea of what is currently selling. Newsstand artists' magazines are another source to get an idea of look and feel.

  3. Visit galleries, shops, museums, local art shows or any place that exhibits work similar to what you are interested in. Ask the proprietors of commercial operations what is selling, not just what is for sale. Ask public curators about current interests in the curatorial community.

  4. For the low end, visit home decor shops and read the magazines to get an idea of current colour choices. Visit the art department of these stores and study what they have for sale. I will say, based on Mary's commercial experience, it is often not what we might call fine art.

How do I price my work? Setting prices can depend on a number of factors including:

  1. Career stage. Artists at the beginning of their career are unknown and cannot command the prices of someone who has either an established reputation, an established market, or both.

  2. Consistency.

    1.  It is important that pricing be relatively consistent across the sizes you paint. That is, a work 16 x 20 should be roughly 4 times the price of an 8 x 10. The easiest solution is charge by the square inch. At $1.00 per square inch, a 16 x 20 painting would retail at $320.

    2. Charging more for what you like and less for what you don't like does not work commercially. First of all, your tastes will be different from your clients' tastes. Secondly, you are sending a message that  you are selling inferior work. If in fact it is inferior, burn it.

    3. You must maintain the same price across all sale venues. Nothing will upset a client more than if they find they paid twice what their neighbour paid. Likewise, a gallery will drop you if they find a competitor is being offered the same product for less. The solution is to create a retail price which is twice what you want to receive since most galleries take half.

  3. Price escalation. It is easy to raise your prices as you grow and improve. It does not look good when you have to reduce them. Start low when you're starting out and increase them gradually as the public accepts your work, measured by increasing sales.

  4. Costs. You certainly want to recover your material costs, particularly your framing which can be expensive. You can reduce costs by using standard sizes and a standard framing motif. You will never receive adequate value for your time until late career if then.

  5. Market research. For the venues you want to exhibit in, see what other artists of similar ability, subject matter and professional experience are selling (not just pricing) their work for. Price yours accordingly.

When I have finished an acrylic painting, should I seal it with some kind of finishing or topcoat? If so, what would you recommend? An acrylic film dries with microscopic pores than can trap dirt and allow moisture into the film (which should not hurt the film since it will evaporate out). The standard practice is to seal it with a varnish coat. I suspect the vast majority of acrylic painters don't use a finish other than perhaps a final layer of acrylic polymer.

All the major manufacturers produce such a varnish or topcoat. I use Tri-Art Topcoat. Since these are new products, their long-term properties are unknown. Golden is probably the safest since they have done more lab research on acrylics than probably any other company. Incidentally, UVLS (UltraViolet Light Stabilizers) are commonly used in these varnishes, for what purpose I'm not sure. Since modern pigments have terrific light fastness properties, UV protection is unnecessary.

Early experimenting with the Tri-Art product over acrylic emulsion over gouache produced crazing when exposed to direct sunlight (never a good practice). This suggests different coefficients of expansion for the acrylic polymer and the topcoat varnish which created mechanical forces that the gouache layer and its bond to the canvas, was not able to tolerate.

Does work that sells necessarily mean it's good? In one respect yes, since the buyer was willing to fork out money for it. Admittedly, art is bought for many reasons, but a rule of thumb - even for collectors - is don't buy it if you can't relate to it in some personal way.

Convention is another important determining factor. A work may be judged good in part because its style or content is in vogue and therefore collected in some artistic circle or other.

The success of it's expression can be judged in terms of the rules of design and composition, providing a more objective measure of its relative goodness. In these terms, work may be good and not sell or bad and sell well.

This type of question often reveals our desire for absolutes in our life. We can set guidelines and principles for what is good, but in the end, they are relative. Goodness is not inherent in the world.

How do I know or express what is inside me? That is what this course is designed to answer.

How do I know if I am in the right medium? Give each medium you are possibly interested in a fair try and decide. By fair, we mean exploring it enough that you have some ideas of its potential and your comfort and satisfaction with it. Realize that you can and very well may, change or combine mediums over time. Trying several is a good way to start.

What is an artist? A circular answer: "one who creates art". There can be an implicit issue of motivation or dedication. One might arbitrarily quantify effort as a measure of an artist. Our categories in Part 2 try to do this non-judgmentally.

Another answer is to consider the difference between a painter and an artist. We suggest a painter is a person technically competent or seeking such competence, in the art of painting. An artist is a person either possessing or seeking to possess a clear vision of personal content and an associate style of expressing that content. An artist can be a painter but a painter is not an artist.

Note that I used the word "seeking". Competence in any form is not a requirement of being an artist, only a sincere desire to find one's personal voice of which technical ability (not accomplishment) is only part.

From a friend, another answer:

“First, one seeks to become an artist by training the hand [techniques]. Then one finds it is the eye that needs improving [drawing skills]. Later, one learns it is the mind that wants developing [design or composition], only to discover that the ultimate quest of the artist is in the spirit [content].” - Larry Brullo [notes in brackets by unknown annotator].

Another consideration for deciding if you are an artist is to assess how tightly integrated it is with your life. How much a part of your life is your art? As an extreme, the American artist Robert Irwin, when asked, could describe his studio in small detail but was totally blank when asked to describe his home. It life was totally engaged with his art and the questions around it. His home life, such as it was, was so inconsequential, that he could say little about it.

As individuals, we must find our own point of balance, but the crucial issue is that art must have some importance in our life and thought to warrant the title "artist".

How do I lighten a painting? Generally, a painting that has become too dark can only be recovered by over-painting the areas to be lightened with a light opaque and then tuning the colour with transparent glazes.

Is activity X the right one for me? To help determine this, ask yourself these questions:

  • Does activity X give me pleasure, relax me, and give me a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction? Include in this question, any other criterion you want the creative activity to meet.
  • Does activity X appear to offer enough scope for expressing my creative urge and my sense of beauty? Include in this question, any specific objective or characteristic you want the creative activity to express.
  • Does activity X fit well within my resource constraints (e.g. time budget)?
  • Is there anything other than activity X I feel I want to explore?
  • Is there anyone you know or have read about that you think "I wish I could [insert name of creative activity, e.g. ‘paint’] like her/him."?

How do I know when (if) my painting is finished? There are several possible indicators:

  • When you no longer feel there are any unresolved areas or “problems”.
  • When some initial objective is met. This is the strongest argument for understanding your content and formulating the content of a work before painting starts. When you work from this position, then you proceed by estimating how well the work approaches the original concept or intent and an assessment of whether you think it can, or needs to be improved.
  • When you have no idea how to improve the work or what to do next. It may be finished or it may be “stuck”. For the latter case, put it aside. At some later time you may learn something that will resolve it. Often, one paints ahead of oneself. Time and contemplation of the work are required to achieve a conscious integration and understanding of the process that lead to its development. After such a period, the next step is often obvious.
  • When it is clearly irrecoverable. Some pieces naturally deserve to be destroyed. Some famous artists have been known to destroy significant volumes of work.
  • Finished doesn’t mean perfect. No artist produces a masterpiece every time. Often it’s a case of this is as good as it gets right now. An assessment of the energy and resources required to correct or improve some problem may lead to the conclusion it is not worth the investment for the marginal improvement to the work the change would render. The question is often “Can I live with it?”
  • As a growing artist, you will not be the same person in six months. Work done today may appear amateurish or unfinished in six months. Appreciate the work as an honest statement of the person you were when it was done. Resist the urge to fix or change it, otherwise you will never finish anything.
  • Working in a series changes the focus of the question. One work generates ideas, often related to problems encountered, that become the motivating influences for subsequent work. In this case, a work may be left in a state the artist recognizes as unfinished but does not wish to invest further effort in, choosing to save it for the next work.
  • When you’ve lost your momentum, the time between changes is increasing and the changes are becoming smaller or more “picky”, you need to declare it finished or put it aside.

How do I know if I have talent? Implicit in such a question is the idea that one may have some natural ability to achieve a goal that either work alone can’t achieve or may be achieved more easily than by work alone. We find in most cases, the degree of artistic success is largely the product of the amount of resources and effort invested.

How do I develop my own style? Personal style emerges from a large amount of practice coupled with self evaluation and introspection. It is one of the objectives of this course to help you find a personal style or at least the beginnings of one.

How do I develop a new style? New style almost always emerges from past experience, building on the vocabularies and techniques that have gone before. Often, new styles are the result of exploration and solution of difficult problems associated with one’s current style.

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